Do I have the gear to run a Haste/Control build well?

Howdy,

One of my 85's in Cataclysm was a Protection Paladin. After they took the style of the class at the time and essentially swapped it with the Guardian Druid, I respec'd my Moonkin as a tank and have played that way throughout MoP.

I've finally gotten around to gearing up my Paladin some. Ground out some PvP gear, got some LFR drops, and spent a good half-hour on the dummy just getting used to the proper rotation as per Icy-Veins so that I was producing as much Holy Power as possible and using it on SotR. But even so, I'm not feeling survivable. I'm getting killed in LFR, never mind normal raiding. Took dirtnaps on both Durumu and Dark Animus. I know I was undergeared (478 equipped) but still, I just feel too squishy for the content I like to run and I feel like since I know what happens in the encounters, I should be performing better.

I have run a haste/haste build since green gear in release week, you never have too bad gear for running a haste build. Your issue is more likely just having way to low item level in general.

Volun-told - A supposedly optional event, award, assignment, or activity in which a person (or persons) are required to attend either by persons-in-charge nominating them or their peers expecting them to be there. The individual often has no say in the matter, and non-attendance in frowned upon.I am so tired of seeing terrible people, being admired, for being terrible people.

On Durumu, you were probably eating the dirt because you weren't timing your shield of the righteous w/ the hard stares, and Dark Animus LFR is brutal on a tank if you're undergeared, you could be tanking everything so that is an excuse, especially with that ilvl.

IMO the hardest part about Paladin right now isn't the haste/control build, that can work out of the gate; it's knowing when to time SotR since it's only up for 3s, and if you get to 5, use one, then hit another ability and use it again you better make sure you quickly get back up or you're going to be struggling to find HP later on when you really need it.

So your gear is probably fine, but your timing is probably off or needs improvement. The new paladin seemingly requires a LOT of skill to play correctly, although it's deceptively easy on bosses without Snapping Bite-esque mechanics (i.e. infrequent huge hit)

Seeing how you can't even queue until 480 i'd imagine that tanking in 478 (as in gear that they shouldn't let you in) isn't a great idea. The difference is that if you had avoidance gear you'd probably get splattered quicker.

Why is it called 'haste/control' and not 'haste/dpswhore'? The control is the same, you still have to do the same things at the same time. The benefit in it over other builds is dps, nothing more.

The control refers to hit and exp hard cap, giving you 100% control over your HoPo regeneration with no chance of dodges or parries.

Volun-told - A supposedly optional event, award, assignment, or activity in which a person (or persons) are required to attend either by persons-in-charge nominating them or their peers expecting them to be there. The individual often has no say in the matter, and non-attendance in frowned upon.I am so tired of seeing terrible people, being admired, for being terrible people.

I thought hit and exp were initial targets to hardcap anyway, no matter which build you choose? The difference would be haste vs mastery (dps vs slightly less dmg taken), not mastery vs hit/exp.

I have never been hard capped in expertise since this expansion released, so no, that is not the point no matter what. Currently sitting on 12-13 expertise. Was on 9-10 during T14.

Last edited by Firefly33; 2013-06-24 at 09:45 AM.

Volun-told - A supposedly optional event, award, assignment, or activity in which a person (or persons) are required to attend either by persons-in-charge nominating them or their peers expecting them to be there. The individual often has no say in the matter, and non-attendance in frowned upon.I am so tired of seeing terrible people, being admired, for being terrible people.

As some mentioned it can be hard to tank dark animus.
You might even survive as well as you should, but healers being occupied with the intense damage the entire raid tends to take, can make the healing you get rather sparse.
Durumu shouldn't be too bad, but if you have trouble, then pull first, since you don't have to tank in the beam then, with the entire raid taking more damage, removing some healing focus from you.

You also have a blend of "real" tank-gear and haste gear, so you end up with half of both worlds.
Little parry/dodge, and little haste.
You have to decide which way you want to go and stick to that. Stam-trinket is fine if you feel you have too little health to be comfortable, in my eyes, but for the rest of the gear you should use the ability to swap to retribution as loot-role as long as it's not a boss dropping weapon/better shield, instead of going with prot.

I have never been hard capped in expertise since this expansion released, so no, that is not the point no matter what. Currently sitting on 12-13 expertise. Was on 9-10 during T14.

You just said a moment ago, the point was giving you 100% control over your HoPo regen? Now you're saying haste is more important than that? (don't get me wrong, I well know the importance of tank dps, but I think for a start the prot pala guide needs updated, and the reasons for the build should be more transparent. For you/anyone else on 13/13, the dps is probably more important than for say the OP, who in current tier should be focusing less on haste - i know you also said you run a haste/haste build, so it's not really relevant to you per se.)

Also when talking about builds, you need to consider all builds. Control was a word invented to seperate the builds. I.e. a full avoidance build was dodge>parry>hit>exp while an avoidance/control one was hit>exp>dodge>parry.

There are some extremely viable mastery builds that are going
mastery>haste>hit>exp and mastery>hit>haste>exp

For haste builds, hit is always the superior one but hit>haste>exp is arguably stronger than the hit>exp>haste route, especially at lower gear levels.

Originally Posted by oggyowl

You just said a moment ago, the point was giving you 100% control over your HoPo regen? Now you're saying haste is more important than that? (don't get me wrong, I well know the importance of tank dps, but I think for a start the prot pala guide needs updated, and the reasons for the build should be more transparent. For you/anyone else on 13/13, the dps is probably more important than for say the OP, who in current tier should be focusing less on haste - i know you also said you run a haste/haste build, so it's not really relevant to you per se.)

If a hunter went for 0 crit he would have 100% control over his dps, since he would never crit he would never get a lucky or unlucky streak of crits. That does not mean he is a better dps for that.

While hit/exp gives you 100% control over your HoPo regen, you can still have 100% control with smart HoPo usage. As I mentioned, I have been below exp cap since MoP released. I have never in a raid so far had an issue with getting parried. Proper HoPo banking makes getting parried irrelevant. More haste over exp hard cap gives you higher dps, higher hps, more HoPo and more absorbs through SS. For anyone that can play a paladin and banking holy power properly, that is a no-brainer.

The only difference between hard capping exp or not is that hard cap exp is 100% reliable at lower skill levels, that does not mean that not hard capping exp is 100% reliable.

What I meant when I said haste/haste, was that I go for hit>haste>exp.

Volun-told - A supposedly optional event, award, assignment, or activity in which a person (or persons) are required to attend either by persons-in-charge nominating them or their peers expecting them to be there. The individual often has no say in the matter, and non-attendance in frowned upon.I am so tired of seeing terrible people, being admired, for being terrible people.

478 is not an ilvl for Durumu (especially on high stacks) or Dark Animus (especially at start). Get it up to 500 and we'll talk then.

That was my initial reaction too. Then I remembered the ilvl requirement for ToT LFR is 480, which he essentially meets as 478 is not significantly different from 480. And to require 500 ilvl to get the chance for 502 drops is just silly talk. Even SoO LFR, which drops 528, will only require 490 (figures from PTR, subject to change).

Like people have said Dark Animus on LFR can be brutal. DPS AOE the small adds. You have to tank a lot of large golems with crimson wake trailing around. I end up trying to kite like crazy. Healing gets unreliable. Gear only gets you so far. I died to Dark Animus LFR last night with 523 ilvl and 2 stamina trinkets.

My preference with undergeared tanks (e.g. my alts) is to go stamina heavy. It gives the healers longer to wake up and makes the PuG less likely to scapegoat you for being undergeared, when you do meet the raid requirements. Sometimes tank gear is to blame for wipes, but usually not - especially this expansion.

Finally got my paladin as my third to 90, and been having a blast tanking on him all the way up. Haven't really been prioritizing any stats other than gems/reforging my high ilvl gear to hit>exp>haste>mastery. I don't really have a choice right now in my gear as I was just looking for higher ilvl stuff, but I can definitely see why this build is effective.

Tanked all the LFRs at the minimum ilvl needed, and didn't really have too many problems.

I can definitely see how good ShoTR use makes a good paladin tank though. On Durumu I tanked it with another prot pally, and the avg hard stare I took was ~100k, while his avg. was ~200k.

It's actually kind of fun gaming HP generation/use to make sure your buff is up when needed.